Speaking with Al Jazeera, Angelo Bonelli, an Italian Member of Parliament and spokesperson of Green Europe, says Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suspended the country’s defence pact with Israel “only after Italian peacekeepers of the United Nations mission were attacked by the Israeli army”.

“In the last few years, I asked Prime Minister Meloni to revoke the military agreement with Israel when the Israeli army bombed Gaza, destroyed schools and hospitals, and killed 70,000 women and children,” Bonelli says.

“You know what she told me about my request? That the military agreement for the Italian government was a diplomatic tool and that it meant maintaining dialogue with Israel.”

He adds that her decision only changed recently after an attack on Italian Unifil peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.

Bonelli has also told Al Jazeera that civil society protests in Italy played a big role in piling pressure on the Italian government to cease its agreement with Israel.

“All the Italian people, the majority of them, said stop the war and we want to rebuild international law that was destroyed by [US President] Donald Trump and [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu,” Bonelli says.